Rachel Held Evans's Blog, page 55

A review of "Torn" by Justin Lee

First, I read it and loved it. 

Then, I loaned it to Dan, and he read it and loved it. 

Then, I loaned it to my parents, and they read it and loved it. 

And the book hadn’t even been released yet! 

This is the power of Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate by Justin Lee, which officially releases today. (Justin participated in one of our most popular "Ask A…" interviews, "Ask a Gay Christian.") It’s the only book about homosexuality and the Church that I feel comfortable recommending to everyone—from my gay friends to my parents.  The minute I finished, I turned to Dan, tears streaming down my face, and said, “This one is a game-changer.” 

I had the privilege of receiving an advance review copy of Torn, in which Justin shares his story.   Nicknamed "God Boy" by his peers, Justin knew that he was called to a life in the evangelical Christian ministry. But he harbored a secret: He also knew that he was gay. With humor, vulnerability, and an accessibility that both disarms and delights, Lee recalls the events—his coming out to his parents, his experiences with the "ex-gay" movement, and his in-depth study of the Bible—that led him, eventually, to self-acceptance. 

Here’s what I wrote for the back cover: 

“This is the most important book I've read in years, and it will be the first I recommend to anyone interested in bridging the divide between the LGBT community and the church. Justin has given us a precious gift with this story. May we receive it with the same courage and faith with which it was delivered." 

I cannot recommend this book enough.  What makes it so effective is how relatable Justin’s story is.  His high school experience could have been mine—loving and involved parents, public school, a life that revolved around a conservative evangelical youth group, a true passion for Jesus and the Bible. 

The only difference is that Justin was gay. 

He didn’t choose to be gay. 

He didn’t want to be gay. 

His parents didn’t make him gay. (The number of Christian counselors who tried to convince Justin that his same-sex attraction was his parents’ "fault" is one of the most sickening, heartbreaking parts of this story.) 

He was (and is) just gay. 

And no amount of praying,  counseling, and self-hatred could change that. 

So Justin sets out to make sense of it….and he does so with more grace and forgiveness than seems reasonable.  He does so with the humility and love of Christ. Though he would have every right to lambast the failures of evangelicalism, Justin’s love for Christ and His Church seeps through every page of this book. It humbled me, and it will humble you. 

I think we can all sense a shift in momentum regarding the future of the LGBT community, and for Christians who feel torn about this, Torn is the best place to start. As I’ve said before, the best way to move beyond a culture war mentality is to listen to one another’s stories, and Justin’s is just the kind of story we need to hear right now. You may not agree with all of his conclusions, but you will be challenged and changed by his story. 

As soon as I’m out from under all this book release/travel craziness, we will continue this conversation. In the meantime, I encourage you to read Torn, and we’ll use it as a starting point for future discussions. 

You buy it here, or wherever books are sold. 

Mrs. Pate - A Woman of Valor

By Kari Baumann 

My favorite high school memories take place in the library: lounging by the magazines, Quiz Bowl practice, the time I spent reading The Lord of the Rings at a table in the fiction section. The library was both a haven and a doorway to freedom. Mostly because of Mrs. Pate.

Mrs. Pate was the perfect school librarian: sensible, no-nonsense. She was polite to every student and had the ability to laugh at an irreverent comment from one student while fixing another with a silencing eye. I tried out for the Quiz Bowl team as a freshman and she immediately took me under her wing. 

Under her watchful presence, the library desk was a place where magical transactions occurred. She slid The Catcher in the Rye over the counter and said, “You should read this.” She handed me a copy of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice and told me that it was a requirement if I was going to be one of her Quiz Bowl girls. When I returned a brand new copy of Wide Sargasso Sea with its cover bent, she did not hide her displeasure. She handed me mysteries and historical fiction and The Princess Bride.

Like all the best teachers, Mrs. Pate went beyond what was required and cared about me as an individual. She gave me rides home after practice and let me cry in her office after my boyfriend broke up with me. When I complained about a couple of the girls in my classes, she dismissed them using words that teachers probably aren’t supposed to use. She spoke of a world I didn’t understand: her husband’s dissertation and her life in a local college town. And she spoke of her faith in a quiet and thoughtful way that was different than anyone else I knew. I wrote my graduation speech at her desk and ran to her office when I found out about my college scholarship. She hugged me as I cried tears of relief. 

The other women in my life had already taught me that it was okay to be smart and interesting. But Mrs. Pate emphasized that in a new way, as a woman (and later a mom) with a career. When I decided to go to graduate school for library science, it was because I realized that the library is the place where I feel most alive. When I decided to make the switch from being a public librarian to a school librarian, Mrs. Pate was the one I called for advice. I owe my career and some of my favorite books to her. (And she was on Jeopardy! Which is basically the coolest thing ever.)

Sometimes students come to my school’s library and stand at the desk and tell me things about their lives. Sometimes they come just to hang out or to blow off steam or to hide or to cry. Sometimes they even come to check out books. I let them stay when I can, and I try to listen, and I tell them how proud I am of them. I want the library to be for them what Mrs. Pate made it for me: a safe place that opened my eyes to new and exciting worlds. 

As a young girl in the 1980s, I grew up knowing I could soar into space or serve on the Supreme Court or run for Vice-President. But in reality, I didn’t know how one might make the leap from rural North Carolina to a job as an astronaut. Mrs. Pate taught me that the most important thing is to love your work. And we loved her right back.

She says I can call her by her first name, but, to me, she will always be Mrs. Pate, woman of valor.

***

Kari is a middle school librarian in North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and her son. She writes about seeing and being seen at www. throughaglass.net . 

This post is part of our Women of Valor series.  Eshet chayil —woman of valor— has long been a blessing of praise in the Jewish community. Husbands often sing the line from Proverbs 31 to their wives at Sabbath meals. Women cheer one another on through accomplishments in homemaking, career, education, parenting, and justice by shouting a hearty “eshet chayil!” after each milestone.  Great women of the faith, like Sarah and Ruth and Deborah, are identified as women of valor.   One of my goals after completing my year of biblical womanhood was to “take back” Proverbs 31 as a blessing, not a to-do list, by identifying and celebrating women of valor.  To help me in this, you submitted nearly 100 essays to our Women of Valor essay contest. There were so many essays that made me laugh, cry, and think I’ve decided that, in addition to the eight winners we featured in August, I will select several more to feature as guest posts throughout the fall. 

We have honored a single mom, a feisty professor, a midwife, a foster parent, an abuse survivor, a brave grandmother, a master seamstress, a young Ugandan woman who reached out to a sister in need, and many more. 

Read t he rest of the Women of Valor series here.

Melodee – A Woman of Valor

By Lindsay Holifield

It was in the dry, barren desert in Arizona. I was barely seventeen, but my emaciated body seemed much younger.

I was fifteen years old when the eating disorder began and I had already been in treatment twice before this time in Arizona. The shame I carried weighed me down so I could barely breathe and the depression haunted the hollows of my eyes.

We met on the first day I arrived; I was weak and bone-thin, a dead girl walking. They told me she would be my primary therapist during my stay, and I nodded numbly and followed the dark-haired woman into her office.

From the very first session we had, I knew I could trust her. I not wanting to talk, and she patiently waiting and trying to understand my story. Even being closed off I must have somehow conveyed the intense self-hatred I kept inside because I remember my weeping and her soft, gentle words about being loved, loved, loved.

I hated being vulnerable, but over the next eight weeks, I began to open up, to share the pain and the shame that was locked inside of me. While I would vehemently tell her again and again that "no, it's not possible, I am not loveable," she would patiently tell me, again and again, that was not true. She showed me what God's love looked like, when I had never experienced that before. I grew up afraid of God, fearing his wrath and trying to keep him happy. She spoke of a different God, one who did not see me as dirty.

My family came to visit halfway through my time in treatment, and we had a family therapy session that did not end well. I went back into my shell and wouldn't talk, and my family was upset and left. She sat with me for a while in silence, and I waited for the inevitable disappointment from her about my behavior.

I will never forget her putting her hand on my shoulder as I cried and saying, "That shame doesn't belong on you." She saw what was going on underneath and spoke to the deepest need I had.

Near the end of my stay, I wrote out a list of everything that I was ashamed of about myself. I wanted to leave at the foot of a wooden cross on the grounds of the treatment center before I left. She and I went there together in the rain and when we reached the cross, she asked me to read the list out loud. I only managed to get a few words out before I broke down and, sitting in front of the cross, she prayed over me, that I would know that God was safe and loving. It was a sacred moment that I will never forget.

I know now that God is safe and loving. I know this because a woman lived out what God's unrelenting love looks like. She spoke grace over a broken girl and changed her life.

For bringing more of God's kingdom to earth by speaking healing into the lives of numerous women, I want this woman -  Melodee -  to be recognized as what she is: an eshet chayil, a woman of valor.

***

 Lindsay is a senior Studio Art major at the University of North Texas. 

This post is part of our Women of Valor series. Eshet chayil—woman of valor— has long been a blessing of praise in the Jewish community. Husbands often sing the line from Proverbs 31 to their wives at Sabbath meals. Women cheer one another on through accomplishments in homemaking, career, education, parenting, and justice by shouting a hearty “eshet chayil!” after each milestone.  Great women of the faith, like Sarah and Ruth and Deborah, are identified as women of valor.  One of my goals after completing my year of biblical womanhood was to “take back” Proverbs 31 as a blessing, not a to-do list, by identifying and celebrating women of valor. To help me in this, you submitted nearly 100 essays to our Women of Valor essay contest. There were so many essays that made me laugh, cry, and think I’ve decided that, in addition to the eight winners we featured in August, I will select several more to feature as guest posts throughout the fall. 

We have honored a single mom, a feisty professor, a midwife, a foster parent, an abuse survivor, a brave grandmother, a master seamstress, a young Ugandan woman who reached out to a sister in need, and many more. 

Read t he rest of the Women of Valor series here.

“Biblical Womanhood” and the illusion of clarity: a response to Kathy Keller

Sounding the shofar for Rosh Hashanah

I have been overwhelmed and overjoyed by the positive response I’ve received to A Year of Biblical Womanhood thus far. Your reflections and reviews have brought happy tears to my eyes, and I am delighted to say that the three most popular responses to the book have been: 1) “it made me laugh a lot,” 2) “it made me want to explore the Bible more,” and 3) “I no longer resent the Proverbs 31 Woman.”  

Mission accomplished! 

I’ve heard powerful, encouraging things from stay-at-home moms, from conservative evangelicals, from biblical scholars, from plenty of guys, even from People Magazine.  I can’t tell you how much it means to see women celebrating one another with hearty shouts of “eshet chayil!” and embracing, some for the first time, the truth that they might not be falling short of “biblical womanhood” each time they let Sara Lee take care of dessert. 

Camille at Odyssee Mama summed up what I'm hearing from a lot of readers: 

"This book made me want to run to my Bible with a renewed sense of excitement to find the stories of women rarely mentioned in the Sunday-morning service. It made me want to do further research into several theological concepts mentioned. It made me want to meet a bunch of friends at Starbucks and have a lengthy conversation about our roles in the church and life. However, it did not make me want to start calling Charlie “master,” about which he was only mildly disappointed."

I'll be sending Starbucks an invoice for my services shortly.

Of course, not every review has been positive, and that’s okay.  Earlier this week, Matthew Anderson issued a constructive, charitable critique that I learned from and took to heart.  Unfortunately, as he notes in his review, not all responses have been so kind.

I suspected I’d get a little pushback from fellow Christians who hold a complementarian perspective on gender, (a position that requires women to submit to male leadership in the home and church, and often appeals to “biblical womanhood” for support), but I had hoped—perhaps naively—that the book would generate a vigorous, healthy debate about things like the Greco Roman household codes found in the epistles of Peter and Paul, about the meaning of the Hebrew word ezer or the Greek word for deacon, about the Paul’s line of argumentation in 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11, about our hermeneutical presuppositions and how they are influenced by our own culture, and about what we really mean when we talk about “biblical womanhood”—all issues I address quite seriously in the book, but which have yet to be engaged by complementarian critics. 

Instead, what I have mostly received from this group are accusations that I hate the Bible and am a “silly woman” who doesn’t know the first thing about hermeneutics and is hell-bent on mocking the Bible.  As someone who loves the Bible, who believes the Bible is inspired by God, and who devotes a great deal of space in her book to communicating that, this response has been both hurtful and frustrating. 

Keller’s Review

Most notable among these critiques came from the Desiring God blog and The Gospel Coalition. The former, written by Trillia Newbell has already been analyzed by others here and here. But I wanted to personally respond to the critique issued by Kathy Keller, written in open-letter-style, over at The Gospel Coalition. 

To begin, I want to make it clear that I respect Mrs. Keller immensely. I know her hard work and service over at Redeemer Presbyterian Church far exceeds her job description and that many, many people have been blessed by her wisdom, experience, insight into Scripture, and grace. I look forward to reading her upcoming book on gender roles, and hope to one day enjoy a conversation with her face-to-face.

At the beginning of her review/letter Keller says, “I tried twice to get in touch with you when you were in New York City on the talk shows but wasn’t able to connect. So here’s what I would have said if we could have gotten the chance to open that dialogue.” 

I was surprised to read this, as I had not heard anything from Keller prior to her review being published. I promptly searched my email, phone, and social media sites for any word from her, but found none. I’ll give Keller the benefit of the doubt and assume our wires got crossed as a result of, you know, the HURRICANE, and/or busy schedules. But I want to make it clear that I wasn’t ignoring Keller in favor of appearing on “talk shows.” I did not hear from her personally until after her review was posted and that conversation will remain private. 

In her review, Keller says, “You began your project by ignoring (actually, by pretending you did not know about) the most basic rules of hermeneutics and biblical interpretation that have been agreed upon for centuries.” These rules, according to Keller, include the fact that biblical stories should not be applied prescriptively, that “Jesus’ coming made the Old Testament sacrificial system and ceremonial laws obsolete,” and that the reader must “look for the author’s intended meaning within the text’s historical context.” She points to my observation of the Levitical purity codes and my highly literal interpretation of praising my husband at the city gate as examples of violating these interpretive principles.

So let's talk about biblical interpretation...

Unpacking biblical womanhood

The purpose of my project was to unpack and explore the phrase “biblical womanhood”—mostly because, as a woman, the Bible’s instructions and stories regarding womanhood have always intrigued me, but also because the phrase “biblical womanhood” is often invoked in the conservative evangelical culture to explain why women should be discouraged from working outside the home and forbidden from assuming leadership positions in the church.  

This complementarian view of “biblical womanhood” involves some serious selectivity and requires a hermeneutical bias (we all have them!)  that relies on some specific assumptions regarding gender and culture.  For example, it emphasizes passages like 1 Timothy 2:12 (“I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent”) while ignoring others like 1 Corinthians 11:5 (“every woman who prays or prophecies with her head uncovered disgraces her head”). And more often than not, it imposes upon an ancient Near Eastern text Western assumptions regarding gender roles and the nuclear family, rendering the woman celebrate in Proverbs 31, for example, into little more than a projection of June Cleaver. 

But the biggest problem, as I saw it, was that those teaching this view of “biblical womanhood” refused to acknowledge that their interpretation—like all interpretations—involved a certain degree of selectivity and required a certain set of presuppositions. I wanted to challenge the idea that the Bible contains a single message about something as complex, beautiful, and mysterious as womanhood. I wanted to unpack, piece by piece, what we mean when we talk about “biblical womanhood,” and I wanted to do it in a funny, disarming way that turned the laughter on myself as an imperfect interpreter rather than on the text itself.  The goal was to hold up a mirror to our interpretive biases to show just how reductive and misleading the phrase “biblical womanhood” can be.

Richard Beck has described the book as a sort of “hermeneutical performance art” and explains that “by refusing to pick and choose, Evans reveals to anyone reading her book just how much picking and choosing is actually going on. She helps you see it. And laugh at the same time.” 

Is the Old Testament “biblical”? 

As I perhaps should have acknowledged more often and more clearly in the book, I am aware that as a Christian, I am no longer constrained by Old Testament law. But my project was an exploration of biblical womanhood—not Old Testament womanhood, not New Testament womanhood, not Jewish womanhood, not Christian womanhood….but biblical womanhood.  And so part of the reason for exploring everything from Leviticus 18, to Proverbs 31, to Song of Solomon, to the epistles of Peter and Paul, was to show just how much this phrase—"biblical womanhood"—really entails, and to not take the hermeneutical devices with which Christians are so familiar for granted. 

This is why I conducted so many interviews—with an Orthodox Jewish woman, an Amish family, and a woman in a polygamist marriage, a daughter of the Quiverfull movement, etc. (The fact that the organization through which I contacted the polygamist family is called “Biblical Families” reveals just how loaded the word “biblical” can be!)  The hermeneutical devices that Keller cites are not, as she might assume, as obvious as they seem. My goal with the project was to create something of a second naivety in order to open “biblical womanhood” up for further discussion, to, in a sense, start at the beginning again. 

As for my homemade sign: In the book, I am quick to note that, as a poem, Proverbs 31 was never intended to be applied literally or prescriptively, so there is no need to make giant posters with which to literally praise our husbands at the city gate (though it’s a fun exercise if you’re in the mood to be creative!), and that “the Bible doesn’t actually command contentious women to sit on their roofs, and rooftops in the ancient Near East would have been flat and habitable anyway” (p. 17). The overwhelming majority of readers seem to have understood that such exercises were meant to be hyperbolic and provocative, intended to bring some of the Bible’s most interesting word pictures to life, and to illustrate, Amelia Bedelia-style, the futility of a hyper-literal application of the text. 

Of course, I balance my more humorous activities with in-depth examinations of the texts in question, exploring the culture, context, and language employed by them in order to get a better sense of what they actually mean. For example: Where else in the New Testament do we find the Greek word praus (for “gentle”), and does that virtue apply only to women? Who was the intended audience of Proverbs 31, and what does its structure and diction teach us about its meaning? How do Peter and Paul’s versions of the Greco-Roman household codes differ from Aristotle’s and Philo’s? Does the Bible really teach that women are required to stay beautiful for their husbands or that motherhood is a woman’s highest calling? 

I asked, explored, and addressed all of these questions in the book, and am truly baffled by Keller’s accusation that I don’t take the historical/literary context of these passages seriously when I devoted so many pages—too many, my editor might contend!—to exploring them. As blogger Glennon Melton said of the project, “Rachel cares too much about the Bible to read what it says without wrestling with what it means.” Similarly, writer Ian Cron called the book “a comprehensive, impeccably researched, heartfelt, whimsical, scripture-honoring book.”  

I sometimes wonder if folks judging the book solely by its most provocative stories looked only at the pictures! 

In her review at The Huffington Post yesterday, Carolyn Custis James noted that "it's an easy dodge (not to mention a huge missed opportunity) when critics discredit Rachel and shove her work aside by accusing her of 'mocking the Bible' or 'using a faulty hermeneutic,' instead of thoughtfully engaging the issues she is raising."

What is biblical womanhood…really? 

So let’s talk about hermeneutics. 

I agree with Keller that it’s pretty clear that sitting on one’s rooftop is not a requirement of “biblical womanhood.”  

What is less clear to me is why complementarians like Keller insist that that 1 Timothy 2:12 is a part of biblical womanhood, but Acts 2 is not; why the presence of twelve male disciples implies restrictions on female leadership, but the presence of the apostle Junia is inconsequential; why the Greco-Roman household codes represent God’s ideal familial structure for husbands and wives, but not for slaves and masters; why the apostle Paul’s instructions to Timothy about Ephesian women teaching in the church are universally applicable, but his instructions to Corinthian women regarding head coverings are culturally conditioned (even though Paul uses the same line of argumentation—appealing the creation narrative— to support both);  why the poetry of Proverbs 31 is often applied prescriptively and other poetry is not;  why Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent the supremecy of male leadership while Deborah and Huldah and Miriam are mere exceptions to the rule;  why “wives submit to your husbands” carries more weight than “submit one to another”; why the laws of the Old Testament are treated as irrelevant in one moment, but important enough to display in public courthouses and schools the next; why a feminist reading of the text represents a capitulation to culture but a reading that turns an ancient Near Eastern text into an apologetic for the post-Industrial Revolution nuclear family is not; why the curse of Genesis 3 has the final word on gender relationships rather than the new creation that began at the resurrection. 

Focusing on the most hyperbolic elements of the project, and totally ignoring the legitimate questions I raise throughout the book, Keller and others have chastised me as silly, unable to handle basic biblical hermeneutics.  But here’s the problem: In her review, Keller appeals to a common-sense hermeneutic of “biblical womanhood” to which I should have deferred, and yet fails to explain in any depth what this common-sense hermeneutic is. She suggests I have muddied the waters, but provides no real clarity in her response.  

This is why the phrase “biblical womanhood” has been such an effective weapon in the gender debates. By its nature, it implies clarity, simplicity, and finality. By its nature, it is immune to questions.

 

But when we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, values, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t fit our presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone, to turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. And more often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says. 

I have been told on more than one occasion that “just because something is in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s biblical.” That’s about as clear as mud, if you ask me! And it shows just how many assumptions go into any claim that this or that is “biblical” in the prescriptive sense. 

What frustrates me the most about complementarian conversations regarding “biblical womanhood” is not the fact that I disagree with a complementarian interpretation of the text but the fact that complementarians consistently insist that they are not, in fact, interpreting the text, but simply reading and applying its clear teachings, and that anyone who might disagree with their conclusions must simply hate the Bible and have no interest in faithfully living by it.  But this idea of a simple, unbiased, and patently obvious hermeneutic is an illusion. It is appealed to, but never explained; cited, but never explored or unpacked. 

…Which is one of many reasons why I wrote A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I wanted to unpack that phrase and ask what sort of presuppositions we are bringing to it. 

Complementarians are selective too…

The reality is, complementarians themselves struggle to interpret and apply their supposedly obvious hermeneutic consistently. 

In the complementarian manifesto, the Danvers Statement, egalitarians are accused of “accepting hermeneutical oddities devised to reinterpret apparently plain meanings of biblical texts,” resulting in a “threat to Biblical authority as the clarity of Scripture is jeopardized and the accessibility of its  meaning to ordinary people is withdrawn into the restricted realm of technical ingenuity.” 

On the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Web Site, Wayne Grudem warns that if Christians accept egalitarianism, “we will begin to have whole churches who no longer ‘tremble’ at the Word of God (Isaiah 66:2), and who no longer live by ‘every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4), but who pick and choose the things they like and the things they don’t like in the Bible.”

So Grudem claims that any selectivity whatsoever represents an arbitrary “pick-and-choose” approach to Scripture and a threat to biblical authority, and that those who support functional gender equality in the home and church are simply bending the “plain meaning of Scripture.”  Egalitarians “pick and choose,” he claims, but complementarians do not. 

And yet Grudem would likely be the first to concede that the Levitical purity codes no longer apply, as the “old law” has been fulfilled in Christ—an interpretive assumption many Christians take for granted, but that nonetheless represents a measure of (deliberate and thoughtful) selectivity. (“Picking and choosing” are probably not the right words to use, as they sound more arbitrary than they should. We all “pick and choose” but most of us try to do so for good reasons, grounded in thoughtful hermeneutics and guided by tradition.) 

 Furthermore, Grudem and his colleague John Piper have struggled to explain where women practicing “biblical womanhood” should draw the line regarding teaching and leading.  In this post, I look at how Piper responded to a question about whether men should listen and learn from Beth Moore.  In his response, Piper cites the first half of 1 Timothy 2:12 (“a woman should not have authority”) as universally applicable, but disregards the second half (“she must be quiet”) by encouraging women like Moore to continue speaking.  If the first half of 1 Timothy 2 is so crucial to the complementarian hierarchal construct, why is the second half, (along with the silence command in 1 Corinthians 14:34) essentially ignored?  Why is it that complementarian women are forbidden from assuming leadership in churches, and yet permitted to speak? Nowhere does the Bible spell out Piper’s bizarre distinction between teaching and speaking or between leader and "shepherd-pastor." Does Piper’s response not “reinterpret apparently plain meanings of biblical texts” and rely on a bit of “technical ingenuity”? 

And don’t we all do this from time to time?

Hermeneutics: Simple and clear? 

Complementarians often say that what’s at stake in this debate is the authority of Scripture, an authority that is compromised whenever Christians fail to live by “every word” of the Bible. But Piper’s response reveals that not even complementarians live by every word of the Bible. Most complementarians do not require women to cover their heads in prayer (1 Corinthians 11:5) or to have long hair (1 Corinthians 11:5), or to avoid fine jewelry (1 Timothy 2:9), or to remain entirely silent in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34). And the hermeneutical construct that informs these distinctions is not nearly as simple as they make it sound. In fact, one of the more constructive criticisms I’ve heard from the complementarian camp is that, in the book, I did not make clear enough distinctions between how various complementarian organizations differ in their positions on biblical womanhood. 

Again, this idea of a simple, unbiased, and patently obvious hermeneutic is an illusion. More often than not, appeals to “biblical womanhood”…or “biblical” anything for that matter… represent an oversimplification, a reductive approach to biblical interpretation that fails to at least acknowledge its own hermeneutical biases. We all have these biases. We all have to interpret the text. We're all selective as a result. That's not the problem. The problem is denying that this is the case! 

So if I have muddied the waters with this project and this book, it’s because I have kicked up all those layers of “biblical womanhood” sediment that have gone unchallenged for so long.  I have challenged the supposedly straightforward hermeneutic that has conveniently rendered "biblical womanhood" into little more than a June Cleaver archetype. I have taken the complementarians at their word and tried biblical womanhood without selectivity, deferring to the text's "plain meaning"...and, ironically, they have called me silly for it.  

As much as we may resist this admission, the Bible is not simple, plain, or easy to understand.  We all struggle to interpret and apply it.  We all bring presuppositions to the text.  This reality does not reduce the value and sacredness of the Bible. Far from it! If anything, it reminds us of our own frailties, our own shared need for patience and grace as we work together to try and understand what the Bible really means.

It will not do to tell a woman that she is forbidden from preaching the gospel from a pulpit, and when she asks why, to simply tell her it’s because of “biblical womanhood.”  If the overwhelming response by women to this book has taught me anything it’s that Christian women are not going to take that phrase for granted any more. We are ready to unpack it, to scrutinize it, to debate it, to discuss it—not out of a hatred of Scripture, but out of a love for it!  

Hermeneutic of love

In the book, I make a brief but impassioned case for reading the text with the prejudice of love, a hermeneutic I believe was employed by Jesus, and, as many reviewers have pointed out, a hermeneutic that Augustine also favored.  This hermeneutic of love is not mere sentimentality, but one that looks to Christ for its definition— Christ, who did not consider power a thing to be grasped, but humbled himself and became a servant to the point of death on a cross. 

It is simple on paper, but not so simple in application…and so I too am left to struggle with those passages that don’t seem to fit my bias and to inconsistently and imperfectly apply my own hermeneutic to the Bible and to womanhood.  Like I say in the book, “the Bible is centuries older than us; prepared to be humbled by it.”  I am humbled by it every day. 

I introduce this idea of reading the text with the prejudice of love at the end of the book on purpose, as the task of fleshing it out is beyond the scope of this particular project...though perhaps will be a part of future ones! Some may be disappointed that I did not conclude the book with a list of rules and acceptable roles. But that's the thing about love. It can't be systematized or rendered into a list of bullet points. It has to be lived. That is the challenge, and the call, for all who follow Jesus. 

And I'll be the first to admit, it's rarely clear and it's rarely easy. 

Biblical interpretation is a messy, imperfect, and at times frustrating process. I wrote this book with humor and with love because I think both are needed in the conversation, particularly as it pertains to something as complex and beautiful as womanhood. 

“Let us put away our swords and our sound bites”

http://electiondaycommunion.org/

You can’t take communion over the internet. Not really. 

And that’s okay. One of the things I love about Christianity is the physicality of sacraments like communion and baptism, the way we can taste, smell, hear, see, and feel the presence of God through these beautiful acts of remembrance and faith.  So if you get the chance, I encourage you to participate in an Election Day Communion near you. This lovely idea is meant to bring Christians of all political and theological persuasions together, united in the common bonds of love and in a shared allegiance to Jesus Christ above all earthly kings and kingdoms.  

We can’t serve communion here today, but I still want this to be a safe place where you can find unity, not division. So I’ve included portions of the suggested Election Day Communion worship service below, and I invite you to share your own prayers, confessions, meditations, and thoughts in the comment section. Please make your comment edifying and positive (or else I’ll delete it because, like I said, this isn’t exactly a church).  I want this to become a place that people can visit throughout the day and find something hopeful. 

Grace and peace to all of you today! 

Call to worship 

Based on Ephesians 4:4-6

We have come together as one.
One people, gathered in the name of the one God.
We will worship together as one.
One community, giving praise and honor to the Righteous One.
We are being empowered as one by One.
One body and one Spirit, called to the hope of one calling, 
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in all.
Now, in the name of the Three-in-One, we act as one.
One people, giving witness to the power of One.

Prayer for the election

By Joanna Harader, author of the “Spacious Faith” blog

God of justice and compassion,
God of Republicans and Democrats and Independents,
God of the poor and the 1% and the middle class,
in the heat of this election year
we pray for our nation, our churches, and ourselves.
In the midst of meanness and deception,
may our words be kind and true.
In the midst of loud speeches and harsh accusations,
may we listen well and try to understand.
May those who follow Jesus do the work of Jesus–
breaking down the dividing walls
speaking the truth in love
meeting together in the face of disagreements.
Holy, loving God, have mercy on your children.
Amen.

Invitation to the table

Adapted from “A call to put away your swords and your sound bites,” 
by Jonathan Martin, lead pastor of Renovatus Church

The world has called you to the voting booth to decide which candidate should run the country. We are calling you to the bread and wine, to decide once more who will run your life. So let us put away our swords and our sound bites. Let us drop our rocks and our nets. Let us come to the table that is not just for the rich and powerful, but for the broken. Come and receive the body of Christ broken for you, the blood of Christ shed for you.

Communion liturgy

Published by the Peace and Justice Support Network of the Mennonite Church USA 

Brothers and sisters, 
If you will to love God before, in, and above all things,
in the power of God’s holy and living Word, then let each say: I will.

If you will to love your neighbors 
and to serve your neighbors with deeds of love
then let each say: I will.

If you will to practice mutual admonition toward your brothers and sisters,
to reconcile yourselves with those whom you have offended, 
to abandon all envy, hate, and evil will toward everyone, 
and to also love your enemies, and do good to them,
then let each say: I will.

If you desire publicly to confirm before the church this pledge of love,
by eating bread and drinking wine,
the living memorial of the suffering and death of Jesus our Lord, 
then let each say: I desire it in the power of God.

Let us eat and drink with one another in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  May God give to all of us the strength to carry out our pledge.

Amen.

We praise and thank you, Lord God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, for your goodness  towards us. Especially you have loved us so much that you sent your beloved son to us, so that all who believe in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. Based on his example we walk the way of love and peace, and we also pray: 

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. 

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when  he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”

“In the same way he took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.’ ”

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Brothers and sisters, by eating the bread and drinking the cup in memory of the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have had fellowship with one another, and have all become one loaf and one body. Since Christ is our Head, we should become conformed to our Head and as his members follow after him—love one another, do good, give and receive counsel, serve our neighbors, and even love our enemies.

Arise now and go forth in the peace of Christ Jesus. The grace of God be with us all.

Amen.

***

What thoughts and prayers are on your hearts today? 

Visit the Election Day Communion Web site for images and resources to share.

Sunday Superlatives 11/4/2012

Yep. I know it's actually Monday. Welcome to my life. :-)

Around the Blogosphere...

Most Relatable: 
Tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney
(for the back-story, see this "apology" from NPR)

Most bizarre: 
USA Today with “What can Alabama-LSU tell us about this year’s election?”

Most Informative: 
The Atlantic with “Why great sign language interpreters are so animated” 

“Callis was great, but not because she was so lively and animated. She was great because she was performing a seriously difficult mental task -- simultaneously listening and translating on the spot -- in a high-pressure, high-stakes situation. Sure, she was expressive, but that's because she was speaking a visual language. Signers are animated not because they are bubbly and energetic, but because sign language uses face and body movements as part of its grammar.”

Most Eye-Opening (nominated by Meredith Holladay) 
Tamara Mann with "Heartbeat: My Involuntary Miscarriage and 'Voluntary Abortion' in Ohio"

“On June 19, the state of Ohio declared that I had a voluntary abortion. My rabbi and my doctors disagreed. I simply wanted to be pregnant.” 

Most Vulnerable (nominated by Erin Wilson) 
Hope with “Jesus Is a Boob Man”

“So I stood there and let my tears and the shower water mingle reminded that all my grief and gut wrenching pain is being held in hands much bigger than my own.”

Most Beautiful: 
Idelette McVicker at She Loves with “She rises while it is yet night” 

So, I embrace Proverbs 31:15:  ‘She rises while it is yet night …’ Not necessarily in the 4:30am wake up call kind of way, but in the way of rising into the Night that I see all around me and so often struggle with, even within.  The Night that looks like gender inequality, violence, oppression, poverty and suffering.   The Night that looks like not having all my ducks in a row and all my themes clearly abstracted.  The Night that looks like admitting struggle and anguish, but also joy.  I am encouraged because into this very Night–our own and our world’s–women of valor rise

Most Encouraging: 
Jen at Simple Girl with “Taking back the Proverbs 31 Woman”

“For the first time in my life I feel like a Proverb 31 woman. I feel like I may actually make the cut."

Best Theological Discussion: 
“The Trinity in Gender Debates”

“Socialists peer into the Trinity and discern socialism; capitalists capitalism; Catholics see hierarchy; the Orthodox see intercommunion among equals; Baptists see Baptists; egalitarians see only equality, and complementarians see complentarianism.  When we use the image-of-the-Trinity strategy, we tend to find what we want to find.” 

Best Imagery:
Preston Yancey with “Then I like being naïve” 

“But the table will be full, for it is always full, and you’ll be placed in the midst of the guests and given a plate—thous hast prepared a table before me—you’ll be poured wine or, perhaps, water, or a nectar so sweet that you should wish to never drink anything else. The person to your right has loved you more than you could ever understand; the person to your left you have sometimes hated, though you’ll find it hard now to remember why.”

Best Response (I found this both encouraging and convicting):
Rachel Stone with “The Hermeneutics of Love”

“…We don’t get to toss out the Greatest Commandment and the one “like unto it” in so doing. To paraphrase Marilynne Robinson, claiming a particular kind of religious identity, and marking out its boundaries, is not more important than abiding in the kind of love that that identity should imply."

Best Storytelling (nominated by Kim Van Brunt) 
Amanda Williams at Deeper Story with “And so we are carried along” 

“Why did I feel so self-conscious of those orange vouchers even now, a full year in? I only brought out the folder when feeling especially brave; most days I scanned the lists with it tucked out of sight in my bag. Our friends and family knew – to them I sang WIC’s praises, unashamed – but strangers and acquaintances were a different matter. It felt too personal, too tender. Oh, the formula costs must be outrageous, friends would say and nod with understanding. But the truth is we were relieved when it paid for the milk and cheese, too.”

Wisest:
Seven-year-old Sarah Bogel, who borrowed her mom Anne’s blog for the day

“If your friend moves away she can still be your friend.” 

Bravest: 
The Washington Post with “Maisie Kate Miller’s passive resistance, pigtail style, tames a bully and shows us how”

Most Likely to Make You Cheer...and Change:
Sarah Bessey with "In which we will subvert the system for good"

Most Likely to Put Election Day in Perspective: 
Election Day Communion

***

I know I missed some good stuff this week. What caught your eye online this week? What's happening on your blog?

My Grandmother, Oneta – A Woman of Valor

By Christiana Peterson

I remember her hands the most. Her knuckles and joints were knotted and twisted, bent from years of painful arthritis.

But that’s not why I remember them.

I recall the way she decorated her fingers with rings, clunky costume jewelry sparkling with fake diamonds, silver rings with clasps that opened secret compartments where she joked she kept her poison. She walked to the sound of clinking bracelets and the soft metallic tapping of long gold necklaces against one other.

In my mind, I can follow her jeweled hands as they help her tell her stories, comb through her short silver hair, adjust the large cross around her neck, tap the crook of her curved nose, brush a canvas.

In her stories, she was born in 1915 in Texas and by the age of thirty, she was still unmarried. She considered herself an old maid, working at the post office and still living at home. When the old boyfriend she hadn’t seen since high school returned from three years in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, she married him.  They both lived to their nineties, still married.

Because he was in the military, they moved over thirty times in the course of their marriage and the stubbornness that kept them together also brought periods of discontent.

She told me that she’d always wished she’d done more with her life.

I couldn’t imagine that because her love and creativity filled my own life.

When I was in middle school, she took me to an art museum for the first time. I discovered a new kind of beauty that day, at that Degas exhibit. And years later, as I studied literature, creative writing and theology, I would think about those Impressionists, wondering at the purpose and voice of art in the world of God. As I did my own writing, I would also think about her stories, the humor and self-deprecation with which she weaved her life with those in her past.

When she was in her sixties, she began to paint. Her canvases were precious possessions to her family: oil paintings of Degas’ ballerinas, sketches of an old tree swing in the backyard, of still life and country life.

In their tiny backyard, she turned a boring wooden fence into a backdrop for vines and flowers, trellises and lattices. Her room was decorated with books: Jane Austen novels and Cadfael mysteries that she would stay up late into the night reading.

Perhaps she lived what some would call a small life. She wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer or a businesswoman. She didn’t give her life to prestigious causes. But to me, she was a woman of courage, feistiness, beauty and strength. She was a political liberal among conservatives. She encouraged me to travel on my own and explore the world, to wait to get married like she did.

I remember her fingers with rings and jewelry, her paintings, her garden and her books because they remind me of the beauty she added to the world. From the seemingly small spaces she inhabited, she taught me that God was grand and beautiful and that art had a way of expanding our imaginations so that they could open up to the feeling of a limitless God.

My grandmother was an artist without fame, a chronicler of the details of life that make us all human. She was fierce in her love for God, for her family and for inhabiting the beauty of creation.

I’d like to think that whenever any of my guests admire her ballerina painting that hangs on my living room wall, a little more of God’s beauty is glimpsed and creation expands in grace.

***

Christiana spent her childhood in Texas but after college, she lived for four years in Scotland, studying theology and writing. She writes, preserves food and cares for her two young children in a Mennonite farming community where she lives with her husband. She blogs at The Beauty of This Hour.

This post is part of our Women of Valor series. Eshet chayil—woman of valor— has long been a blessing of praise in the Jewish community. Husbands often sing the line from Proverbs 31 to their wives at Sabbath meals. Women cheer one another on through accomplishments in homemaking, career, education, parenting, and justice by shouting a hearty “eshet chayil!” after each milestone.  Great women of the faith, like Sarah and Ruth and Deborah, are identified as women of valor.  One of my goals after completing my year of biblical womanhood was to “take back” Proverbs 31 as a blessing, not a to-do list, by identifying and celebrating women of valor. To help me in this, you submitted nearly 100 essays to our Women of Valor essay contest. There were so many essays that made me laugh, cry, and think I’ve decided that, in addition to the eight winners we featured in August, I will select several more to feature as guest posts throughout the fall. 

We have honored a single mom, a feisty professor, a midwife, a foster parent, an abuse survivor, a brave grandmother, a master seamstress, a young Ugandan woman who reached out to a sister in need, and many more. 

Read t he rest of the Women of Valor series here.

The View from Times Square

While most people were rushing to get out of New York City, Dan and I were rushing to get in. 

We were scheduled to appear on The View Monday morning to talk about A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and had lined up multiple media appearances throughout the week, so we changed our flights around and just barely made it into the city on one of the last flights into LaGuardia. 

We connected in Atlanta, and as we dashed up the escalator to catch our flight, we were confronted with a startling sight: A group of emergency personnel were huddled together at the foot of the opposite escalator, appearing to perform chest compressions on someone who had apparently fallen. We got out of the way before we could find out what happened (and I’ve searched the internet to see if there was any news, but nothing appears, which I’m hoping is a good sign), but the sight left us numb and shaky. 

As we waited in line board the plane, Dan looked dazed. 

“One minute all you can think about is catching a flight, and the next you’re confronted with your own mortality,” I said for us both. “One wrong step and…” 

I trailed off, unable to speak. 

A bumpy ride into LaGuardia followed. By the time we got into our cab, the mayor had announced that the entire NYC subway system would be closed at 7 p.m. It seemed unlikely that our interviews would proceed, but we were stuck in the city, with no going back. 

Our room on the 32nd floor of The Millennium Broadway Hotel looked out over Times Square. Flashing ads for Victoria’s Secret and Hershey’s Chocolate reflected in our windows. One by one, producers called to cancel our appearances, and while families across the Northeast crammed as much as they could into suitcases, praying their homes would be there when they returned, I cried like a baby over a single bad review. 

Not once during Hurricane Sandy did we lose power. In fact, Dan and I made the most of Sandy—ordering a bunch of food from the deli across the street, chuckling at the obligatory shots of CNN reporters clinging to telephone poles while shouting through microphones, enjoying some of the only quiet time together we’d had in months. But on Monday night, as the wind picked up and reports of major flooding came rolling in, we were sobered. I’ll never forget looking out the window to see the words “Generators at NYU Hospital fail” slide across the brightly-lit ABC scroll in Times Square. It was no one’s fault, of course, but it just seemed so unfair.  Somehow I could get on the internet, make phone calls, and even order room service, while a mother watched helplessly as her baby’s respirator failed, just blocks away. 

This pattern would repeat itself again and again throughout the week.  We had finally reached release week for A Year of Biblical Womanhood and things felt simultaneously big and small, important and unimportant, profound and shallow. We spent two hours in a car to travel just 20 blocks both ways, only to have the interview cancelled because of an Obama/Christie press conference. We laughed with Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd. We called Dan’s family in New Jersey, and everyone was okay. We gasped at the story of a mother whose two little boys were drug away from her by the rushing water. We complained about my critics and about how we spent too much money on clothes.  We got a taste of Mayor Bloomberg’s “Spanish.” We hung out with friends we hadn’t seen in a while. We watched fires burn and waters rise.  We worried about missed flights and changed plans and the presidential election and shorter-than-planned segments and the homeless guy without a coat and lost internet and that damn rogue crane.  We realized in a way we hadn’t before just how much our sense of control is an illusion. 

Throughout it all, the words of James haunted me:

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

At the end of the day, it’s all mist. It’s all fragile and fleeting and destined to pass: the criticism, the praise, the security, the fear, the storms, the camera lights, popularity, obscurity, life, loss, turbulence, traffic, the rising tides, the presidential election, books, beaches, the bright lights of Time’s Square, and even New York City itself. 

If you’ve read A Year of Biblical Womanhood you can guess what words have been running through my head this week: 

Let nothing upset you,

Let nothing startle you.

All things pass;

God does not change.

Patience wins all it seeks.

Whoever has God lacks nothing:

God alone is enough. 

I whispered these words from Teresa of Avila to myself on the plane during turbulence, in the green room before The View, for the doctors and nurses at NYU Hospital, after getting called a heretic and whore on the Internet, every time I thought about the person at the bottom of that escalator. 

When we finally got home last night, Dan collapsed into the couch and said, “I feel like I just woke up from a dream in which I lived through a hurricane and then got interviewed by Barbara Walters.” 

That about sums it up. 

It’s going to take a while for these two introverts to process what just happened, but I want to thank you all for your encouragement and support. If I know anything, it’s this: Life is short and fragile, and what matters the most is not the books we write or the esteem we garner, but the people we love. I am more grateful than I have ever been for you, for my family, for Dan, for friends, for kind words, and for the gift of life.  

It wasn’t the release week I had planned, and that’s okay. It's the release week I was given, and, like most gifts,  it was more than I deserved. 

To help the victims of Hurricane Sandy, consider donating to The Red Cross or World Vision. 

The View

Hey folks! So we’ve rescheduled my chat about A Year of Biblical Womanhood with the ladies of
The View for Thursday, November 1 at 11EST/10Central on ABC.  Use #BiblicalWomanhood if you want to tweet
your thoughts.

Of course, this whole week has served as a profound reminder of the truth of James' instructions to the early church: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15)

Plans change.

Floodwaters rise.

Life is fragile.

But, Lord willing, I'll be talking about the hermeneutics of head coverings with Whoopi Goldberg tomorrow, so be sure to tune in! 

Thank you.

The words of encouragement many of you shared today on your
blogs brought me to happy tears. I wanted to try to contact each of you
directly, but I knew I’d forget someone, so let me use this space to say: thank
you, thank you, thank you. What a joy it is to travel this journey of faith
together. Today I feel like a true woman of valor, and it's because of you. 

Love to you all from NYC!